Right Hemisphere

Right Hemisphere

Tomorrow is the day Right Hemisphere releases version 5 of (most of) its software suite, and today was the day Rix Kramlich, the company’s new vp of worldwide marketing, described it for me.

What sets Right Hemisphere apart from other technical documentation providers is that they encourage you to stay with the CAD and graphics software you already use. Some 130 file formats are translated into and out of their own .rh format. What this means is that CATIA users continue using CATIA, and that Illustrator users continue using Illustrator. Right Hemisphere does the grunt work in the background, translating between CATIA to Illustrator, and also modifying the images from solid CAD models to isometric 2D line drawings. As required, PMI and ERP data is automatically added to diagrams.

The name, by the way, comes from its origins in the creative industry, and the Right Hemisphere is supposed to be the creative side. [I am not sure what that means for people who claim to not have a creative BONE in their body.] The company became better-known last year as the one who provided Adobe with the U3D technology used in Acrobat 3D.

The other items being announced tomorrow are:

o Deep Publisher and Deep View will be free. (I hope I got the names right; I’m working to deadline here). o Deep Server and Enterprise ship in early summer. o New API and SDK allows customers to make their own applications using any programming language, but Flex has been found to work well. o Workflow Designer allows you to interactively define the workflow of technical documents.

I asked Mr Kramlich who his competitors were. People like Seemage and Bunkspeed do some things but none do it all as does Right Hemisphere. I mentioned PTC, but then the CAD end of their tech doc system is Pro/E.

I had to chuckle at Mr Kramlich defining PLM as « Pain, Labor, Misery. » You’ll get to chuckle too, when Right Hemisphere launches its new ads using that slogan.